Barnett, Hubert

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ORAL HISTORY OF HUBERT BARNETT
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
November 1, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is November 1, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC., 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history from Hubert Larry Barnett, 917 Wilder Chapel, Maryville, Tennessee, about living in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Please state your name, place of birth and date of birth.
MR. BARNETT: My name is Hubert Larry Barnett. I was born August 14, 1916, in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Would you please state your father’s name and the place of birth and date, if you remember?
MR. BARNETT: My father was a medical doctor. He was born in the county seat. It was Senatobia, Mississippi. He was actually born in Tyro. The date was August 30, 1886.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your mother’s maiden name and place of birth and date?
MR. BARNETT: Mary Lee Gordon, G-O-R-D-O-N. She was born right outside of Holly Springs, Mississippi, a little community called Chulahoma, Mississippi. Her birthday was March 4, 1887.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what your father’s school history was?
MR. BARNETT: School history?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, sir.
MR. BARNETT: Yes. He started off in med school at the University of the South which we now call Sewanee. While he was in Sewanee, they discontinued the med school after – I don’t know how many years he went there but he transferred and got his medical degree at a school that is now known as the University of Tennessee Medical School at Memphis, Tennessee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s school education?
MR. BARNETT: My mother had the equivalent of a high school education. She actually, before she married, was a teacher.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about brothers and sisters? Do you have brothers and sisters?
MR. BARNETT: Oh yes. By the way, my daddy has taken postgraduate courses at Vanderbilt Med School as well as – just Vanderbilt.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And your brothers and sisters?
MR. BARNETT: My older brother graduated from the University of Mississippi, degree in Engineering.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was his name?
MR. BARNETT: Lee Aubrey, A-U-B-R-E-Y. My sister, Nanny Louise Barnett, she attended University of Mississippi as well as MSCW which is Mississippi College for Women at Columbus. She did not receive her degree. I think she went about three years, but did not get her degree.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were your brother and sister born –
[Conversation overlapped 04:12]
MR. BARNETT: I have another brother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Another brother? What was his name?
MR. BARNETT: Robert James Barnett.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they born in Holly Springs, Mississippi also?
MR. BARNETT: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned –
[Conversation interrupted 04:29]
MR. BARNETT: Now, my sister was born in a hospital in Memphis but she lived – now, when I say Holly Springs, it’s not in the city limits but that was the county seat. And I just always used the term, instead of out in the country, I’d say “Holly Springs”.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned your father was a medical doctor. After he got out of med school, where did he do his medical doctoring?
MR. BARNETT: First in Holly Springs vicinity. He was a country doctor. Then, we moved to Greenwood, Mississippi, where he was in public health and I went through high school and college while we were living in Greenwood, Mississippi. You didn’t ask me about my younger brother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay, what was his name?
MR. BARNETT: Robert James Barnett. I think you got that. He was an undergraduate at Ole Miss, University of Mississippi. He received a medical degree from Tulane University and did a residency in Orthopedic Surgery at Walter Reed Hospital. He was in the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel after World War II. When he got out of the Army, he established a practice in Jackson, Tennessee. Now, all my brothers and sisters have passed on.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned earlier about your school history. Tell me about where you went to school.
MR. BARNETT: Okay, after I finished high school, I went to Riverside Military Academy for one year. That’s in Gainesville, Georgia. Then, I went to the University of Mississippi for four years with a degree in Civil Engineering. I've also taken postgraduate work in Purdue University in which the [inaudible 07:10] I was with that time had professors come over and give classes to certain select supervision and we took courses in Business Management from Purdue University. I have a certificate that says I graduated with it, whatever that means.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work while she was raising the family?
MR. BARNETT: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why did you come to Oak Ridge?
MR. BARNETT: I was in the Engineering Department in Remington Arms Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. We built and operated small arms ammunition plants. I was also the – I had an office in Philadelphia. I was the contact between Frankford Arsenal and Remington Arms. At that time, we had six plants. We were producing small arms ammunition and this is during years ’41, ’42, ‘43. We had plants in Missouri, Colorado, Utah, Massachusetts, Ohio, and the home plant in Connecticut. We received all our plans and specifications from Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia. We made small arms ammunition but some of the things we made were classified. So I had top secret War Department clearance. I spent two days per week in Philadelphia to get questions answered and get information to feed back to the production plants.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how did you know to come to Oak Ridge?
MR. BARNETT: Alright, they –although I was with Remington, the time came that we had more ammunition than we knew what to do with so they decided to disband the Engineering Department and Tom Lane – you probably have heard of Tom Lane, he was in charge of industrial relations for Carbide.
He came up to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to interview several people that could be made available. In other words, although they were cutting back on the engineering, I hadn’t been notified. But I got permission, talked to Tom Lane. He is with Union Carbide. I accepted position in the late fall of 1943 and I reported for work in the latter part of 1943 in New York where I was immediately assigned as a staff engineer for the maintenance department’s superintendent. There wasn’t any maintenance department at that time. My job was to help plan a maintenance department for the K-25 plant. Our office was in the Woolworth Building where Kellex was designing the K-25 plant. Now, one of my responsibilities was to see that the plant had adequate spare parts to operate. Now, that – let me explain that. All our equipment was special and after they finished the plant, all these production lines making special equipment were shut down. So, I had to – working with Kellex, had to make sure that we had adequate spare parts to operate the plant and some instances on highly classified parts, we had to move equipment to Oak Ridge and set up manufacturing facilities at Oak Ridge on what we estimated would be high usage parts or equipment.
I coordinated that effort. Then, I continued – during that time, I had to visit plants where they were making the equipment and with Kellex, while we took care of the spare parts program. Then, I moved to Oak Ridge, I came to Oak Ridge in February to more or less, get a house and my wife and myself moved to Oak Ridge in the early part of March,1944. I was still putting in the foundations for K-25 at that time. During that time, I continued on spare parts as well as facilities for manufacturing equipment if we needed it and then, I helped organize the maintenance department. In fact, I worked up the first organization chart for the maintenance department, gave it to Tom Lane. Well, I didn’t do it all by myself. With the consulting of the maintenance’s superintendent, I worked with him and we worked up the organization chart which didn’t turn out like we thought it would. Then, I was involved in interviewing people for the maintenance department and deciding what happens. During the war, Ford, Bacon, and Davis operated the maintenance building (1401) as a service to the construction contractors. At the end of the war, the maintenance building and most of Ford, Bacon, and Davis personnel were transferred to Carbide.
[Conversation interrupted 15:11]
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did Kellex have a pilot plant before Oak Ridge was fully built?
MR. BARNETT: No, Columbia University did the theoretical design of the plant and they had a place called the Nash building. Now, they had never been a diffusion plant before. In the Nash building, a lot of the people hired by Carbide went down there because they were doing development work and Columbia University was pretty much in charge of the development work going on in the Nash building. But, I spent all my time working with Kellex on getting information, getting the proper drawings that we needed to train our people because not only did we have to get qualified people but we had to train them in maintenance activities that they’ve never been exposed to it before. It was all special.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you know what was going to transpire after the plant was built, what they were doing?
MR. BARNETT: Oh, certainly. The first day on the job in Kellex, I was given two books to read. One was the latest information on fission and fusion, all about the cloud chambers and sort of a history. I was already familiar with Einstein’s Theory of Relationship between Energy and Mass, so that wasn’t new to me. I was aware of that, but it went on to explain Einstein’s theory and I knew about Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt. I was aware of – I could have gone to Hanford because Hanford was operated by DuPont and DuPont owned Remington so Hanford was available to me if I wanted to go out there. But being a southern boy, I wanted to get back south.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when you were hiring people to do maintenance work, tell me a little bit about the security that was involved with it.
MR. BARNETT: Oh, okay, alright. This is my opinion. I’ve never seen statistics. I would say that we had 7,000 employees in the plant when the war ended. I’d say not over fifty people knew what the hell was going on. I just happened to be one of them. In fact, in my car pool – we all had to go to work in car pools. That was about the only time we ever talked about fission and fusion and how we were doing so forth. We all put up a dollar in the car pool, who could come closest to the date they dropped the first bomb. Well, I lost. The assistant plant superintendent won but he didn’t know any more than the rest of us. We knew what the assay was and the material we were producing. We knew that we were sending our enriched uranium to Y-12 to feed the Beta plants. The Alpha plants they built at Y-12; it didn’t have capacity to make the bomb. S-50, K-25 plus what they could get out of the Alpha buildings, supplied the material that went into Beta plants that made the first bomb.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the process of the S-50?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, I've been through it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you explain how it worked?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, the steam plant – I want to get into our steamed generation plant later. That’s an interesting subject but the K-25 steam generation plant was completed way ahead of K-25. They had that plant sitting there, ready for operation and as I have read, at the suggestion of – who’s the guy in charge of Los Alamos?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oppenheimer?
MR. BARNETT: Oppenheimer. As I understand, I didn’t know of these people although I had been around General Groves. Oppenheimer suggested to Groves – this is hearsay evidence, that they should use the steam plant at K-25 and build a thermal diffusion plant to separate the uranium isotope. What they did, they had stages just like we had in K-25 diffusion. They used steam on one side and I think liquid nitrogen in the middle. They called it thermal diffusion. They got the steam from our steam plant at K-25. On one side, you had steam and on the other side, you had liquid nitrogen that separated the bigger molecules from the smaller molecules in stages. It’s a wild idea but it worked and when we started needing power, they had to build a separate steam plant at S-50 to provide steam for the thermal diffusion operation.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, was that steam plant in the S-50 plant located on the Clinch River, down by the river?
MR. BARNETT: Yes, [inaudible 23:08] just run a pipe from K-25 steam plant right onto the thermal diffusion plant and they later had a big oil tank farm to supply fuel to their own steam plant that they had to build after we start using our steam for K-25.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there any reason they used oil instead of coal?
MR. BARNETT: I never gave that any thought, but I don’t know why they did that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the S-50 process a column process that had tall columns and the separation went through the columns?
MR. BARNETT: Yes, it had columns. In other words, you have steam on one side and coolant on the inside. We’re talking about our steam at 900 degrees super heat. That’s pretty hot and they had hundreds of stages. I have been there with – I've seen the operation. In fact, a steam line ruptured and closed a facility. I don’t know if that was ever publicized or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was that a very fast process of separating the uranium?
MR. BARNETT: Well, it was – I would say they, at that time, were supplying as much, maybe it was more than K-25. But in the long run, when all of K-25 got on the line, it was obsolete. In other words, our production rate was so much – it was an inefficient operation.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There was a statement that General Groves made it said that the S-50 plant was inefficient, it took too long. It just wasn’t productive enough so they shut it down. Is that a true statement or do you recall?
MR. BARNETT: Yes. At this time – all this is fuzzy to me. At the time, they were grabbing partially enriched uranium from any place they could get it at. K-25 only had a few buildings on the line, the 302 and 303 series were getting low assay U-235. It took all three plants to supply feed for the Beta building at Y-12. They were K-25 Alpha buildings at Y-12 and S-50. We at K-25 put the first building on line in January ’45 and by June we were making an impact in Y-12 feed. The 302 and 303 building were the first buildings in operation. By June, we were making an impact and we continued till all 52 K-25 buildings were K-27 and on line. Then, Y-12 became obsolete and it shut down in September ‘46.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were at work during the day, did you work shift work or just day shift?
MR. BARNETT: No, well, let’s put it this way. You worked when you’re needed to be there. We didn’t pay attention to shift supervision.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me how hectic the life was when you were working at K-25.
MR. BARNETT: Well, I was young, full of piss and vinegar…Excuse me (laughs) and we were all young people. We’re in our 20s or early 30s and we were all buddies, friends. I didn’t consider it although I did and ended up in the hospital with an ulcer. We consider it fun as much as we, in other words we want to get this damn thing done. We didn’t look at it as, “Well, I hate to go to work. I hate this.” It was more of a challenge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have any employees ask you what they were doing? Or did anyone talk about it?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t –see we had codenames. The processed gas was known as 616. The coolant was known as 816 and you never –or you called it PG or processed gas. But we were encouraged to use C-616 or C-816 for our coolant. But did people ask questions? I don’t recall that anybody ever asked me and the only time I recall that we talked about it was in the car pool where everybody had top secret clearance.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At this time, you were married? Your wife was here in Oak Ridge with you?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, where did you first live?
MR. BARNETT: 50 Outer Drive, B house in 50 Outer Drive.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what a B house is.
MR. BARNETT: B house?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. BARNETT: It’s a cemesto with two bedrooms, living room, kitchen and utility room. If you are two people and the company decides you needed the cemesto, if there are two of you, in fact, I think I believe I put my mother down as a residence. Anyway, I got a B house which was adequate. Then, my two sons were born, one in ‘45, one in ‘47. Then, I got a D house in ‘47. That’s a three bedroom house with a dining room. That was at 102 Outer Drive.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how the houses were heated?
MR. BARNETT: Hell yes, soft coal. Everything was black. On a cold, foggy morning, there was a fog over Oak Ridge of black smoke and it got everywhere. Now, I’ll tell you about how it got changed later on, about how we got natural gas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how they delivered the coal or where they kept the coal?
MR. BARNETT: Well, you had this coal bin in the – you had a little coal bin in the utility room that they would – Roane-Anderson Company would supply us coal. Now, we had to pay rent on our house now. We had to pay – I forgot how much it was a month but the coal was included if I remember correctly. Then, we had to keep the fire going 24 hours a day and a lot of time providing more soot for the atmosphere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your wife’s name?
MR. BARNETT: Shirley, S-H-I-R-L-E-Y.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And how did you meet your wife?
MR. BARNETT: When I was in Remington in Connecticut, I was a young engineer up there and the company got us nice rooms in nice homes out in town and I happen to be in a – got a room in a nice home, back to back where Shirley’s home was. Shirley’s mother felt sorry for me, the poor little lonesome boy from Mississippi so she phoned Shirley. Shirley was a receptionist at a machine tool plant. She phoned Shirley and says, “How would you like to meet a boy from Mississippi?” Shirley pictured me with a straw hat with a toothpick in my mouth and she says, “Heavens, no!” But that night, while Shirley’s mother went over and got me, brought me over there, introduced me to Shirley, we went down into the game room and played ping pong. She beat the stuffing’s out of me. I thought I could play ping pong until I played her and then, we put a record on, we danced. Then, I asked her, “Could I come back tomorrow night?” And she says, “Yes.” So, I came back the next night. She let me beat her in ping pong, and it went on from that and that was in June of ’41, and we were married the following May of ‘42.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what your wife said when she first came to Oak Ridge about the housing and the city itself?
MR. BARNETT: Well, when we came down there, I’d already been issued – what is that little apartment on Tennessee Avenue that have efficiency apartments in?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Broadway Apartments?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t know but –
[Conversation interrupted 36:07]
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is it above the tennis courts?
MR. BARNETT: It’s right across from Jackson Square.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Above the tennis courts?
MR. BARNETT: Well, it was close to the tennis courts. Anyway, we stayed there for about ten days until our furniture came down and we were told that our B house was ready and the furniture would be arriving on such and such a day. But instead of unloading the furniture in our house late in the afternoon, they unloaded it in Bunny Rucker’s house, which was right down the street. They unloaded my furniture in the wrong house. Bunny Rucker was in charge of operations with K-25 in Manhattan Project days and so that was the start of Shirley and her new home in Oak Ridge. They unloaded her furniture in the wrong house. Well, we realized what was – I had been down before and explained all this to her what Oak Ridge was like. You had lots of mud. You had wooden sidewalks. You had coal-fired furnaces. Now, I did – we did have a telephone. Clark Center got me a telephone, which was – a lot of people had party lines. But Clark, bless his soul, he got me – there wasn’t any party line on mine.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what a party line is.
MR. BARNETT: Two or three people on the same phone. In other words, you and your neighbor might be on the same line. You could listen in to what he’s saying.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But you had a private line?
MR. BARNETT: I had a private line.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how did you see the neighborhood where you first lived; were the neighbors friendly?
MR. BARNETT: Oh, certainly. We’re all in the same boat.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they easy to make conversation with?
MR. BARNETT: Oh, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Even though they were from different parts of the United States?
MR. BARNETT: We were all in the same boat. It didn’t mean to us where you were from.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where your wife did her grocery shopping?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, at that grocery store, A&P at Jackson Square.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Outer Drive Shopping Center?
MR. BARNETT: Outer Drive Shopping Center? Yeah, that’s where we shopped.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the name of that grocery store?
MR. BARNETT: No, but we also shopped – she also shopped at A&P, A&P down in Jackson Square area.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did she have an automobile to use at that time?
MR. BARNETT: Well, let’s put it this way, there were five in our car pool. I drove one day a week. She had the car the rest of the time and I had a government issued car at the plant.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, do you remember the construction community at K-25 called Happy Valley?
MR. BARNETT: Oh, sure. Hundreds of trailers and hutments along the ridge and valley at the K-25 area on the road towards Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me or describe how Happy Valley looked, if you can remember.
MR. BARNETT: I used to get my haircuts there at Happy Valley. I used to have lunch every day at Wheat School.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where do you remember that being located?
MR. BARNETT: Well, when you come to – you’re going towards K-25 and you come to a crossroad that goes – one goes over the hill, the other goes around.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s Blair Road.
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, it was right down the corner.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Corner of Blair Road and the road going to K-25?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, before you got to K-25, it used to be – the railroad track used to go by there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you had lunch in the school?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, Ford, Bacon, and Davis operated a lunch facility there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the school in operation at that time?
MR. BARNETT: No, it was not, but the building was still there and in good shape.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, Happy Valley, was that a trailer camp or do you recall?
MR. BARNETT: It – pretty much so but it was fully furnished.
MR. HUNNICUTT: For construction workers for K-25?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What other places of business did they have in Happy Valley?
MR. BARNETT: Well, they had a grocery store. They had a barber shop and – wasn’t a whole lot there but that’s about – I don’t – I hadn’t thought about that in so long, I'm not real sure. I don’t want to mislead you. But I did use to get haircut there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Moving back into Oak Ridge, your children, you had?
MR. BARNETT: Two boys.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Two boys. What were their names?
MR. BARNETT: Larry and Lee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, is Lee the oldest?
MR. BARNETT: The oldest.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When they attended Oak Ridge schools, do you recall which schools they attended?
MR. BARNETT: Cedar Hill.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Both of them?
[Conversation interrupted 43:33]
MR. BARNETT: Cedar Hill and the high school. Did you go to Cedar Hill? [asks son off camera]
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about their junior high, did they attend Jefferson Junior High at that time?
[Conversation interrupted 43:47]
MR. BARNETT: Did you go to Jefferson?
SON: Jefferson.
MR. BARNETT: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did they get to school?
MR. BARNETT: They rode a school bus. You rode a school bus to school, didn’t you?
SON: Walked or bicycle.
MR. BARNETT: What?
SON: Walked or took the bicycle.
MR. BARNETT: At Cedar Hill, you walked?
SON: Or rode the bicycle.
MR. BARNETT: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, when they were going to school, do you recall what kind of dress clothes they wore?
MR. BARNETT: What did you wear to school?
SON: Can't remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s okay.
SON: I'm not here, remember?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Probably typical jeans or –
MR. BARNETT: Whatever the style at that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. BARNETT: I know on Friday night, they’d always go to the – what was the place y’all go to on Friday night?
SON: Wildcat Den.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Wildcat Den.
MR. BARNETT: The Wildcat Den.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At this time, when you went to work, and the plant got up and running more, tell me some more about what your job duties was at that time.
MR. BARNETT: Well, in the ‘40s, late ‘40s, I was in charge of the planning department of maintenance and engineering. There’s always a lot of construction going on at K-25 at that time. By our planning department, we had to submit any project over a certain amount of money, in a formal request to the AEC with drawings and justification all that stuff. I had the estimating department, the materials department, the job engineers that oversaw the projects, plus preparing the proposal justifying the projct. That was in the ‘40s and then when the Cold War continued to heat up, they decided to build a K-29 plant. So, I got involved in a big way on that because they asked me, my department to make an estimate what the plant was going to cost and I told Bill Humes, who I worked for, he was my boss, I said, “How in the world am I going to estimate what a converter is going to cost?” He says, “Grab a bunch of drawings that you people have just made, get on the road and go to some manufacturer’s and ask what it cost to build so many of those.” So, okay, I went up in the Midwest, talked to people. I went up to a place like Newport News ship building and dry dock, which made a lot of our equipment. And I’d stretch these secret drawings out on the table and I said, “Now look, I can't give you a copy of that. It’s a secret but you can take all the notes you want to. I want to know how much this would cost.” And that came back to bite me when I took polygraph examinations, I was asked did I disclose classified information to unauthorized people. I said no. I was following instructions but I was letting unclassified people see secret drawings. I got the estimates and we – I remember that Dick Cook, Colonel Cook and Clark Center came to my office and we went over the cost estimate to build K-29 and they accepted our estimate and that’s what they asked Congress, money to build a K-29 plant so that was part of my responsibilities back then. I had trouble with polygraph tests after that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned polygraph test or lie detector test; I think they call it in those days. How often did you have to take that?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t remember. I took several of them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what was the result after you took this one and divulged – you let secret drawings be seen by non-cleared people?
[Conversations interrupted 49:11]
MR. BARNETT: Well, they asked me “Have you released classified information?” I sweated and sweated and “Now, how am I going to answer that?” and I finally convinced myself that I would be morally right to say “no” because I had been instructed to get this information that we could pass on to the government and I said, “No.” Now, years later and I’d say in the – probably the 1980s or 1970s, I asked a good friend of mine, George Dykes. I said, “George, did I ever fail a polygraph test?” He says, “No, if you had failed it, I would have known about it.” So, my conscience was clear. I did what I was instructed to do. I got the information I needed and everybody’s happy.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In 1945, when they dropped the bomb on Japan, where were you and what was your thoughts?
MR. BARNETT: What was my thought? I lost a dollar.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was because you guys had a bet on when the date they would drop the first bomb?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were you when you heard the news?
MR. BARNETT: I was in my office at K-25 and it seems to me that the plant had been notified and had been – it’s a little hazy. I phoned Shirley, my wife, and said “Turn on the radio at such a such a time. There’s going to be an announcement made.” My biggest surprise was it’s all – all over the United States, I saw what everybody was talking about. We went into the war and all that. I've been in secret for so long that it was sort of a surprise.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned meeting and working with General Groves. What type of person was he?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t know. I can't answer that question because the only time I saw him was when he was at the administration building at Clark Center’s office or someplace like that and my office, at that time, was in the same building. I just casually see him, not talk to him. I didn’t have an opportunity to actually be around while he was talking. I’d just see him.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about Colonel Nichols?
MR. BARNETT: Nichols? He – I never saw him at the plant. He most stayed in the Castle as far as I know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did any of the scientists ever visit the K-25 plant that you know of?
MR. BARNETT: Oh, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who were they?
MR. BARNETT: The fellow who, at Columbia University who was in charge of the research on the gas and diffusion plant. Now, let’s see what was his name? I was in a meeting with him one time. No, I was in Clark Center’s office and he came by and spoke to us. He was the one who – he was head of the engineering department at Columbia University at the time. I forgot his name.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they seem to be very knowledgeable with what they were talking about?
MR. BARNETT: Well, I really didn’t – he was knowledgeable. Look at the results but as far as the making of the bomb, that was out in Los Alamos and all we were doing was the gaseous diffusion. That’s about as far as I was involved.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about security in Oak Ridge in those days, in the city itself?
[Conversation overlapping 54:24]
MR. BARNETT: Well, I think it was acceptable. I think it was good. We just – we didn’t talk.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall seeing billboards around the city that said to keep your mouth shut or something that may –
[Conversation interrupted 54:49]
MR. BARNETT: I tell you, it seemed to me there was stuff like that. I know that they patrolled the fences on horseback and the word got out, I don’t know how true this was. One of the guards on horseback saw a rabbit. He’s going to kill himself a rabbit. The rabbit ran in front of it. When his pistol got aimed of the horse’s head, he pulled the trigger. The rabbit got away but the horse didn’t. I don’t know whether you ever heard of the story or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, I've heard that before. Did you have anybody, relatives or anybody, friends, that came to visit you during the times when the city was gated?
MR. BARNETT: Well, my mother and my – it seem to me – I don’t think so, just my mother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what you had to go through to get a pass for her to get in?
MR. BARNETT: Yes, it’s the same as I did because she was going to stay an extended period of time. She had a regular badge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember where you had to go to get the pass?
MR. BARNETT: I think at Elza Gate, if I remember correctly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about milk delivery in town? Do you recall how milk was delivered in Oak Ridge?
MR. BARNETT: You didn’t get any milk during the war. When Lee and Larry were born, we had to use red stamps to buy canned milk to feed them. We’d feed them on canned milk. It took red stamps out of our ration book.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me again about some of the high security situations in Oak Ridge. You mentioned something about liquor. What is that all about?
MR. BARNETT: What we thought and I still believe to be accurate that the officer’s club always ran short of whiskey so during that period, if you go through the gate, they’re going to search your car for whiskey and they confiscated your whiskey and I always said it went directly to the officer’s club. Now, I was never in the officer’s club but they seemed to be looking for whiskey and nothing else. Well, they said firearms and things in that nature which I'm sure they did and we were always trying to think of ways to get it in. ’How we can beat them?’ If you get caught, all they’re just going to take your whiskey. Plus the people making these decisions, they’re the ones drinking it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what were some of the ways you got the whiskey in?
[Conversation interrupted 58:23]
MR. BARNETT: Well, when I came down here, a good buddy, you’ve probably heard of Bob Wickle, he’s still alive. Bob and myself were in New York together and he asked me to bring a case of whiskey down to him. Well, I brought myself a case of whiskey and I stopped over here in Clinton, gave him a ring when we drove down to Oak Ridge. I said, “Bob, I'm in Clinton such and such place. How are we going to get those two cases of whiskey in?” He says, “I’ll meet you at a such and such place.” He came in a government car and we packed two cases of whiskey around the engine. Being a government car, they never looked at the engine. They would look under the hood and look in the trunk and they look in the back seat. They’d look under the fenders, every place. So, I followed Bob into the plant and he is in the government car and although they checked the government car, they didn’t look under the hood. He went a couple of blocks on a side street and I got my case of whiskey out of the government car, put it back in mine. So that was – then, I had a friend of mine who was coming in and she had a child with her and she had some whiskey in the back seat and when they started looking, she pinched the child real hard, child starts screaming and hollering and she says, “God, hurry up. I’ve got to get this child home.” They let her go on through. Now, it was – oh now, what some of the AEC people did or maybe the Army, I forgot. They had briefcases that they could fit four fifths in it and they’d tag it secret. Were you aware of that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: No.
MR. BARNETT: Well, these are things that went on. Now, I never knew of anyone who did anything illegal. I don’t call it illegal bringing whiskey in because I knew where it was going to go if we got caught. I never knew anyone who brought anything in or did anything that was violating security. We were all – after all, this was during the war. We were concerned about our safety as much as anybody else so – but we were full of piss and vinegar.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When they opened the gates in March of 1949, do you remember that event?
MR. BARNETT: I was out of town. I wasn’t in town. It wasn’t –I remember the event and the Hollywood stars being here but I was up East somewhere, at the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your wife attend any of the events?
MR. BARNETT: No, that was –
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of the special places in Oak Ridge that you and your wife went to visit or enjoy recreation or things of that nature?
MR. BARNETT: You mean while we were living there?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. BARNETT: Well, we had friends and we had dinner parties. We belonged to the dance club. In fact, I was president of the dance club one year. We had – we used to go to a lot of movies back then but I had been to half a dozen movies in the past 50 years I guess. Back then, we’d go to movies and Shirley would go to Knoxville, shop. We had lots of friends that –we all had dinner parties, things of that nature. It’s a good social group.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about dancing on the tennis courts? Did you ever attend any of those?
MR. BARNETT: Dance on the tennis courts?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tennis courts, yes, in the early days?
MR. BARNETT: No, I never danced on the tennis courts.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about a place called the Snow White Drive-in? Do you remember that?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about the Snow White Drive-in.
MR. BARNETT: You have to ask my son.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it a restaurant?
MR. BARNETT: I have heard of it but I don’t recall.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You don’t remember it?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the Skyway Drive-In Theater?
MR. BARNETT: Oh yeah. Let’s see, the fellow who owned that was a good friend of ours. I think I even forgot his name. We went to football games. We’d always go to UT football games. We’d go to drive-in theaters, but you have to realize we were busy raising a family. That was the most important part of our life at that time. Now, when we bought that cemesto, we started improving it like putting doors on the closets, like changing the heating to natural gas, like I built a concrete patio in the back and had a telephone out on the patio, had indirect lighting and we used to throw parties out there on our patio. And I had fence all around it and we had a swimming pool on the back for the boys. Colonel Nichol’s brother-in-law who was also a colonel had lived in our D house before we did and he had the contract to build a little swimming pool in his home as well as a nice barbeque pit. So, when we got the house, we had a swimming pool for the boys. Now, I don’t know who paid for it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: We’ll probably never know that, will we? How about Oak Ridge Hospital? Did you ever have a need to use the hospital?
MR. BARNETT: Well, when the boys were born and when I had an ulcer.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about your stay in Oak Ridge Hospital when you had your ulcer. Did they take good care of you?
MR. BARNETT: Well see, the doctors were personal friends of mine. We knew most of the doctors in town. In fact, Dr. Regan lived right across the street from us. We used to go to football games together. We had quality doctors. We had quality nurses and I think that the Oak Ridge Hospital and medical service did a good job back then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the dental service you had in town?
MR. BARNETT: The what?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Dental service for your teeth? Did you ever use that?
MR. BARNETT: Of course, I had my teeth filled. Just like any other ordinary town, I think it was all right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there anything else that we hadn’t talked about that you’d like to talk about Oak Ridge?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah. I don’t think – I just don’t believe that all the problems we had with our steam generation plant is probably known. Now, the first thing, the power lines from steam plant to K-25, they had lead covered – lead sheath cables to transmit the power in a trench and I remember that it was moist in the trench. I never knew really why they did that but I think they was trying to sabotage or something. Anyway, electrolysis was happening on the lead sheath and that was discovered and we had to put [inaudible 01:09:03] protection on all the cables of K-25 to the power house because if that lead sheath did electrolytic action and then deteriorates, you’d have a hell on explosion of that went to ground and that would shut the plant down. At that time, our plant was not connected with TVA and the only source of power was our own. That was – I don’t know whether that information has been recorded or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I noticed the pictures of the S-50 building, it was painted black. Do you know any reason why that building was black or the top roof of the building was black?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t know. Now that you mentioned it, I remember it was black. But I never asked a question. I don’t know. One time, TVA opened up some gates at the bottom of the dam to get all the trash out of the bottom of Norris Dam into the mainstream to get rid of it, clean up the bottom of the lake. Well, when that trash hit – this was on the Poplar creek. No, it was on the Clinch. It went into the intake system for the condensers for all of our turbines in the steam plant and when that trash hit the screen – it’s normally supposed to clear up the trash, there was so much of it, it jammed the screen, broke the cast iron sprocket which was four feet in diameter that drove the screen. The trash came in and blocked the screen to where the water wouldn’t go through. There was no condensed water for all the turbines driving the plant generators to supply K-25. K-25 shut down. Now, it wasn’t – you just don’t press a button and start everything up again. Here we had a four feet diameter sprocket to drive the chain and we phoned the company and said “Can you get us a sprocket?” I didn’t. They said, “Well, we’ll put it on the production list. It’ll be several weeks, probably a week or so, several weeks before we can get it.” I had my designer to go down and make a drawing of that sprocket with all the teeth in it and we had the machine shop make a sprocket out of one inch steel plate. The hub of an old sprocket was still usable. We put some dowel pins between the steel plates and hub and got that back in service in a couple of days after cleaning the thing out. So, we got the steam plant back and up. I mean the generator plant back in operation. But you don’t shut a cell down without going through a procedure or you’re going to damage some equipment. Well, that’s had happened. A lot of equipment in the cascade was damaged and it took weeks to get that plant back on the line. The TVA shut us down once but the AEC had a levee built down in the Clinch River and put a lot of screens out there so when the water got ready to come into a cooling system, it had already have been through screens. I don’t know whether all that’s been recorded or not but that’s the time that TVA shut us down. Now, at that time, we couldn’t use TVA power. We wasn’t connected with TVA which later we were. Another time we screwed up, I didn’t screw up but power house operators did. They tried to put a 25 megawatt turbine on the line, 180 degrees out of phase. You know, it’s the sine curve of sixty cycle. Well, they tried to put it on phase that it pulled all of the windings out of the generator. It just sheared the keyways right out of the shaft coupling and it really gave TVA a bump. The TVA operation dispatched an office in Chattanooga, as I understand, phoned up and he says, “What the hell are y’all doing?” Well, if you saw the inside of that turbine, you saw what a mess we had.
That’s another problem we had and then, in the late ‘50s, I was in charge of maintenance at that time, mechanical maintenance which included [inaudible 01:15:50] powerhouse, K-25, all the auxiliaries. I was in charge of operating the railroad, the salvage yard with all the radioactive material. I got a call from my supervisor that the powerhouse’s, their 10 inch 160 schedule pipe just broke loose from a turbine and we shut the powerhouse down. Well, I jumped in my car and went down there. I got in the turbine room. It looked like it had been snowing. The insulation for all that piping system had just – that pipe just waving around like that with all that energy back of it and that asbestos insulation, which is sifting through the air. This break was caused by graphitization in the heat affected zone of the world. The piping system could not take the 900 degree temperature of the steam and graphite formed on the heat affected zone on the welds. Now, we had – with the ultrasound methods before that, we had detected that it had quite a few wells and had replaced them with stainless steel rod. This one, we didn’t detect and that 10 inch – can you imagine that 10 inch line busting loose providing steam to that turbine and the pipe flopping around in the air with 1300 pounds pressure, 900 degree temperature of super heat and insulation going everywhere? As a result of that, they shut – well, that time, in the late 50s, we were tied in to TVA and they replaced all of the high pressure piping system. This took months to do that so the steam generation plant has a history of itself of problems. I don’t know if all this has been properly recorded or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you retire?
MR. BARNETT: Well, I was transferred to Y-12 in 1960. I stayed at Y-12 in charge of mechanical – no, maintenance over there; just the field maintenance, I didn’t have the shops. Then in 1966, when I left Y-12, Carbide transferred me to one of their own plants in Kokomo, Indiana where I was in charge of engineering and maintenance of one of their plants in Kokomo, Indiana. Then, that was in 1966. In 1970, Carbide sold that plant to Cabot Corporation. Politics got involved and I resigned and went to Canada. I accepted a job in Quebec at a stainless steel plant where I was in charge of engineering and maintenance there. We were made all grades of stainless. We had a 65 ton arc melt furnace and we did our own rolling and heat treating and rolling of stainless steel to make all grades, weld all popular grades.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you finally retired from Oak Ridge and went to these other jobs. Did you ever come back to Oak Ridge later?
MR. BARNETT: Oh sure. Larry lived and then graduated from college while he set up a business here in Oak Ridge. He was president of East Tennessee Engineering Company.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you live in Maryville today?
MR. BARNETT: Who?
MR. HUNNICUTT: You.
MR. BARNETT: Yes, I live in a retirement. I have a cottage over there. They also have facilities for assisted living. They also have a health clinic for people, who need to stay in, plus they hold beds and I lost my wife two years ago.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, it’s been a pleasure to interview you and your information about K-25 has been very helpful. I'm sure that anyone in the future that would like to know more information about K-25 that you don’t read in a book, will certainly get it from your interview today and I thank you very much for your time.
MR. BARNETT: Well, there’s one thing I didn’t tell you, which I think is – as soon as the war was over, John L. Lewis threatened to take his coal miners out on strike. As a result of that, the government built a 23 inch natural gas pipeline from Nashville to our steam generation plant at K-25. That’s how we got natural gas in Oak Ridge because of John L. Lewis.
[End of Interview]
[Editor’s Note: Portions of this transcript have been edited at the request of Mr. Barnett. The corresponding audio and video components remain unchanged.]

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ORAL HISTORY OF HUBERT BARNETT
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
November 1, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is November 1, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC., 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history from Hubert Larry Barnett, 917 Wilder Chapel, Maryville, Tennessee, about living in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Please state your name, place of birth and date of birth.
MR. BARNETT: My name is Hubert Larry Barnett. I was born August 14, 1916, in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Would you please state your father’s name and the place of birth and date, if you remember?
MR. BARNETT: My father was a medical doctor. He was born in the county seat. It was Senatobia, Mississippi. He was actually born in Tyro. The date was August 30, 1886.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your mother’s maiden name and place of birth and date?
MR. BARNETT: Mary Lee Gordon, G-O-R-D-O-N. She was born right outside of Holly Springs, Mississippi, a little community called Chulahoma, Mississippi. Her birthday was March 4, 1887.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what your father’s school history was?
MR. BARNETT: School history?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, sir.
MR. BARNETT: Yes. He started off in med school at the University of the South which we now call Sewanee. While he was in Sewanee, they discontinued the med school after – I don’t know how many years he went there but he transferred and got his medical degree at a school that is now known as the University of Tennessee Medical School at Memphis, Tennessee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s school education?
MR. BARNETT: My mother had the equivalent of a high school education. She actually, before she married, was a teacher.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about brothers and sisters? Do you have brothers and sisters?
MR. BARNETT: Oh yes. By the way, my daddy has taken postgraduate courses at Vanderbilt Med School as well as – just Vanderbilt.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And your brothers and sisters?
MR. BARNETT: My older brother graduated from the University of Mississippi, degree in Engineering.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was his name?
MR. BARNETT: Lee Aubrey, A-U-B-R-E-Y. My sister, Nanny Louise Barnett, she attended University of Mississippi as well as MSCW which is Mississippi College for Women at Columbus. She did not receive her degree. I think she went about three years, but did not get her degree.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were your brother and sister born –
[Conversation overlapped 04:12]
MR. BARNETT: I have another brother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Another brother? What was his name?
MR. BARNETT: Robert James Barnett.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they born in Holly Springs, Mississippi also?
MR. BARNETT: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned –
[Conversation interrupted 04:29]
MR. BARNETT: Now, my sister was born in a hospital in Memphis but she lived – now, when I say Holly Springs, it’s not in the city limits but that was the county seat. And I just always used the term, instead of out in the country, I’d say “Holly Springs”.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned your father was a medical doctor. After he got out of med school, where did he do his medical doctoring?
MR. BARNETT: First in Holly Springs vicinity. He was a country doctor. Then, we moved to Greenwood, Mississippi, where he was in public health and I went through high school and college while we were living in Greenwood, Mississippi. You didn’t ask me about my younger brother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay, what was his name?
MR. BARNETT: Robert James Barnett. I think you got that. He was an undergraduate at Ole Miss, University of Mississippi. He received a medical degree from Tulane University and did a residency in Orthopedic Surgery at Walter Reed Hospital. He was in the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel after World War II. When he got out of the Army, he established a practice in Jackson, Tennessee. Now, all my brothers and sisters have passed on.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you mentioned earlier about your school history. Tell me about where you went to school.
MR. BARNETT: Okay, after I finished high school, I went to Riverside Military Academy for one year. That’s in Gainesville, Georgia. Then, I went to the University of Mississippi for four years with a degree in Civil Engineering. I've also taken postgraduate work in Purdue University in which the [inaudible 07:10] I was with that time had professors come over and give classes to certain select supervision and we took courses in Business Management from Purdue University. I have a certificate that says I graduated with it, whatever that means.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work while she was raising the family?
MR. BARNETT: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why did you come to Oak Ridge?
MR. BARNETT: I was in the Engineering Department in Remington Arms Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. We built and operated small arms ammunition plants. I was also the – I had an office in Philadelphia. I was the contact between Frankford Arsenal and Remington Arms. At that time, we had six plants. We were producing small arms ammunition and this is during years ’41, ’42, ‘43. We had plants in Missouri, Colorado, Utah, Massachusetts, Ohio, and the home plant in Connecticut. We received all our plans and specifications from Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia. We made small arms ammunition but some of the things we made were classified. So I had top secret War Department clearance. I spent two days per week in Philadelphia to get questions answered and get information to feed back to the production plants.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how did you know to come to Oak Ridge?
MR. BARNETT: Alright, they –although I was with Remington, the time came that we had more ammunition than we knew what to do with so they decided to disband the Engineering Department and Tom Lane – you probably have heard of Tom Lane, he was in charge of industrial relations for Carbide.
He came up to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to interview several people that could be made available. In other words, although they were cutting back on the engineering, I hadn’t been notified. But I got permission, talked to Tom Lane. He is with Union Carbide. I accepted position in the late fall of 1943 and I reported for work in the latter part of 1943 in New York where I was immediately assigned as a staff engineer for the maintenance department’s superintendent. There wasn’t any maintenance department at that time. My job was to help plan a maintenance department for the K-25 plant. Our office was in the Woolworth Building where Kellex was designing the K-25 plant. Now, one of my responsibilities was to see that the plant had adequate spare parts to operate. Now, that – let me explain that. All our equipment was special and after they finished the plant, all these production lines making special equipment were shut down. So, I had to – working with Kellex, had to make sure that we had adequate spare parts to operate the plant and some instances on highly classified parts, we had to move equipment to Oak Ridge and set up manufacturing facilities at Oak Ridge on what we estimated would be high usage parts or equipment.
I coordinated that effort. Then, I continued – during that time, I had to visit plants where they were making the equipment and with Kellex, while we took care of the spare parts program. Then, I moved to Oak Ridge, I came to Oak Ridge in February to more or less, get a house and my wife and myself moved to Oak Ridge in the early part of March,1944. I was still putting in the foundations for K-25 at that time. During that time, I continued on spare parts as well as facilities for manufacturing equipment if we needed it and then, I helped organize the maintenance department. In fact, I worked up the first organization chart for the maintenance department, gave it to Tom Lane. Well, I didn’t do it all by myself. With the consulting of the maintenance’s superintendent, I worked with him and we worked up the organization chart which didn’t turn out like we thought it would. Then, I was involved in interviewing people for the maintenance department and deciding what happens. During the war, Ford, Bacon, and Davis operated the maintenance building (1401) as a service to the construction contractors. At the end of the war, the maintenance building and most of Ford, Bacon, and Davis personnel were transferred to Carbide.
[Conversation interrupted 15:11]
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did Kellex have a pilot plant before Oak Ridge was fully built?
MR. BARNETT: No, Columbia University did the theoretical design of the plant and they had a place called the Nash building. Now, they had never been a diffusion plant before. In the Nash building, a lot of the people hired by Carbide went down there because they were doing development work and Columbia University was pretty much in charge of the development work going on in the Nash building. But, I spent all my time working with Kellex on getting information, getting the proper drawings that we needed to train our people because not only did we have to get qualified people but we had to train them in maintenance activities that they’ve never been exposed to it before. It was all special.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you know what was going to transpire after the plant was built, what they were doing?
MR. BARNETT: Oh, certainly. The first day on the job in Kellex, I was given two books to read. One was the latest information on fission and fusion, all about the cloud chambers and sort of a history. I was already familiar with Einstein’s Theory of Relationship between Energy and Mass, so that wasn’t new to me. I was aware of that, but it went on to explain Einstein’s theory and I knew about Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt. I was aware of – I could have gone to Hanford because Hanford was operated by DuPont and DuPont owned Remington so Hanford was available to me if I wanted to go out there. But being a southern boy, I wanted to get back south.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when you were hiring people to do maintenance work, tell me a little bit about the security that was involved with it.
MR. BARNETT: Oh, okay, alright. This is my opinion. I’ve never seen statistics. I would say that we had 7,000 employees in the plant when the war ended. I’d say not over fifty people knew what the hell was going on. I just happened to be one of them. In fact, in my car pool – we all had to go to work in car pools. That was about the only time we ever talked about fission and fusion and how we were doing so forth. We all put up a dollar in the car pool, who could come closest to the date they dropped the first bomb. Well, I lost. The assistant plant superintendent won but he didn’t know any more than the rest of us. We knew what the assay was and the material we were producing. We knew that we were sending our enriched uranium to Y-12 to feed the Beta plants. The Alpha plants they built at Y-12; it didn’t have capacity to make the bomb. S-50, K-25 plus what they could get out of the Alpha buildings, supplied the material that went into Beta plants that made the first bomb.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the process of the S-50?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, I've been through it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you explain how it worked?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, the steam plant – I want to get into our steamed generation plant later. That’s an interesting subject but the K-25 steam generation plant was completed way ahead of K-25. They had that plant sitting there, ready for operation and as I have read, at the suggestion of – who’s the guy in charge of Los Alamos?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Oppenheimer?
MR. BARNETT: Oppenheimer. As I understand, I didn’t know of these people although I had been around General Groves. Oppenheimer suggested to Groves – this is hearsay evidence, that they should use the steam plant at K-25 and build a thermal diffusion plant to separate the uranium isotope. What they did, they had stages just like we had in K-25 diffusion. They used steam on one side and I think liquid nitrogen in the middle. They called it thermal diffusion. They got the steam from our steam plant at K-25. On one side, you had steam and on the other side, you had liquid nitrogen that separated the bigger molecules from the smaller molecules in stages. It’s a wild idea but it worked and when we started needing power, they had to build a separate steam plant at S-50 to provide steam for the thermal diffusion operation.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, was that steam plant in the S-50 plant located on the Clinch River, down by the river?
MR. BARNETT: Yes, [inaudible 23:08] just run a pipe from K-25 steam plant right onto the thermal diffusion plant and they later had a big oil tank farm to supply fuel to their own steam plant that they had to build after we start using our steam for K-25.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there any reason they used oil instead of coal?
MR. BARNETT: I never gave that any thought, but I don’t know why they did that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the S-50 process a column process that had tall columns and the separation went through the columns?
MR. BARNETT: Yes, it had columns. In other words, you have steam on one side and coolant on the inside. We’re talking about our steam at 900 degrees super heat. That’s pretty hot and they had hundreds of stages. I have been there with – I've seen the operation. In fact, a steam line ruptured and closed a facility. I don’t know if that was ever publicized or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was that a very fast process of separating the uranium?
MR. BARNETT: Well, it was – I would say they, at that time, were supplying as much, maybe it was more than K-25. But in the long run, when all of K-25 got on the line, it was obsolete. In other words, our production rate was so much – it was an inefficient operation.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There was a statement that General Groves made it said that the S-50 plant was inefficient, it took too long. It just wasn’t productive enough so they shut it down. Is that a true statement or do you recall?
MR. BARNETT: Yes. At this time – all this is fuzzy to me. At the time, they were grabbing partially enriched uranium from any place they could get it at. K-25 only had a few buildings on the line, the 302 and 303 series were getting low assay U-235. It took all three plants to supply feed for the Beta building at Y-12. They were K-25 Alpha buildings at Y-12 and S-50. We at K-25 put the first building on line in January ’45 and by June we were making an impact in Y-12 feed. The 302 and 303 building were the first buildings in operation. By June, we were making an impact and we continued till all 52 K-25 buildings were K-27 and on line. Then, Y-12 became obsolete and it shut down in September ‘46.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were at work during the day, did you work shift work or just day shift?
MR. BARNETT: No, well, let’s put it this way. You worked when you’re needed to be there. We didn’t pay attention to shift supervision.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me how hectic the life was when you were working at K-25.
MR. BARNETT: Well, I was young, full of piss and vinegar…Excuse me (laughs) and we were all young people. We’re in our 20s or early 30s and we were all buddies, friends. I didn’t consider it although I did and ended up in the hospital with an ulcer. We consider it fun as much as we, in other words we want to get this damn thing done. We didn’t look at it as, “Well, I hate to go to work. I hate this.” It was more of a challenge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have any employees ask you what they were doing? Or did anyone talk about it?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t –see we had codenames. The processed gas was known as 616. The coolant was known as 816 and you never –or you called it PG or processed gas. But we were encouraged to use C-616 or C-816 for our coolant. But did people ask questions? I don’t recall that anybody ever asked me and the only time I recall that we talked about it was in the car pool where everybody had top secret clearance.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At this time, you were married? Your wife was here in Oak Ridge with you?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, where did you first live?
MR. BARNETT: 50 Outer Drive, B house in 50 Outer Drive.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what a B house is.
MR. BARNETT: B house?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. BARNETT: It’s a cemesto with two bedrooms, living room, kitchen and utility room. If you are two people and the company decides you needed the cemesto, if there are two of you, in fact, I think I believe I put my mother down as a residence. Anyway, I got a B house which was adequate. Then, my two sons were born, one in ‘45, one in ‘47. Then, I got a D house in ‘47. That’s a three bedroom house with a dining room. That was at 102 Outer Drive.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how the houses were heated?
MR. BARNETT: Hell yes, soft coal. Everything was black. On a cold, foggy morning, there was a fog over Oak Ridge of black smoke and it got everywhere. Now, I’ll tell you about how it got changed later on, about how we got natural gas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how they delivered the coal or where they kept the coal?
MR. BARNETT: Well, you had this coal bin in the – you had a little coal bin in the utility room that they would – Roane-Anderson Company would supply us coal. Now, we had to pay rent on our house now. We had to pay – I forgot how much it was a month but the coal was included if I remember correctly. Then, we had to keep the fire going 24 hours a day and a lot of time providing more soot for the atmosphere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your wife’s name?
MR. BARNETT: Shirley, S-H-I-R-L-E-Y.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And how did you meet your wife?
MR. BARNETT: When I was in Remington in Connecticut, I was a young engineer up there and the company got us nice rooms in nice homes out in town and I happen to be in a – got a room in a nice home, back to back where Shirley’s home was. Shirley’s mother felt sorry for me, the poor little lonesome boy from Mississippi so she phoned Shirley. Shirley was a receptionist at a machine tool plant. She phoned Shirley and says, “How would you like to meet a boy from Mississippi?” Shirley pictured me with a straw hat with a toothpick in my mouth and she says, “Heavens, no!” But that night, while Shirley’s mother went over and got me, brought me over there, introduced me to Shirley, we went down into the game room and played ping pong. She beat the stuffing’s out of me. I thought I could play ping pong until I played her and then, we put a record on, we danced. Then, I asked her, “Could I come back tomorrow night?” And she says, “Yes.” So, I came back the next night. She let me beat her in ping pong, and it went on from that and that was in June of ’41, and we were married the following May of ‘42.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what your wife said when she first came to Oak Ridge about the housing and the city itself?
MR. BARNETT: Well, when we came down there, I’d already been issued – what is that little apartment on Tennessee Avenue that have efficiency apartments in?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Broadway Apartments?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t know but –
[Conversation interrupted 36:07]
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is it above the tennis courts?
MR. BARNETT: It’s right across from Jackson Square.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Above the tennis courts?
MR. BARNETT: Well, it was close to the tennis courts. Anyway, we stayed there for about ten days until our furniture came down and we were told that our B house was ready and the furniture would be arriving on such and such a day. But instead of unloading the furniture in our house late in the afternoon, they unloaded it in Bunny Rucker’s house, which was right down the street. They unloaded my furniture in the wrong house. Bunny Rucker was in charge of operations with K-25 in Manhattan Project days and so that was the start of Shirley and her new home in Oak Ridge. They unloaded her furniture in the wrong house. Well, we realized what was – I had been down before and explained all this to her what Oak Ridge was like. You had lots of mud. You had wooden sidewalks. You had coal-fired furnaces. Now, I did – we did have a telephone. Clark Center got me a telephone, which was – a lot of people had party lines. But Clark, bless his soul, he got me – there wasn’t any party line on mine.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what a party line is.
MR. BARNETT: Two or three people on the same phone. In other words, you and your neighbor might be on the same line. You could listen in to what he’s saying.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But you had a private line?
MR. BARNETT: I had a private line.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how did you see the neighborhood where you first lived; were the neighbors friendly?
MR. BARNETT: Oh, certainly. We’re all in the same boat.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they easy to make conversation with?
MR. BARNETT: Oh, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Even though they were from different parts of the United States?
MR. BARNETT: We were all in the same boat. It didn’t mean to us where you were from.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where your wife did her grocery shopping?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, at that grocery store, A&P at Jackson Square.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Outer Drive Shopping Center?
MR. BARNETT: Outer Drive Shopping Center? Yeah, that’s where we shopped.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the name of that grocery store?
MR. BARNETT: No, but we also shopped – she also shopped at A&P, A&P down in Jackson Square area.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did she have an automobile to use at that time?
MR. BARNETT: Well, let’s put it this way, there were five in our car pool. I drove one day a week. She had the car the rest of the time and I had a government issued car at the plant.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, do you remember the construction community at K-25 called Happy Valley?
MR. BARNETT: Oh, sure. Hundreds of trailers and hutments along the ridge and valley at the K-25 area on the road towards Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me or describe how Happy Valley looked, if you can remember.
MR. BARNETT: I used to get my haircuts there at Happy Valley. I used to have lunch every day at Wheat School.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where do you remember that being located?
MR. BARNETT: Well, when you come to – you’re going towards K-25 and you come to a crossroad that goes – one goes over the hill, the other goes around.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s Blair Road.
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, it was right down the corner.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Corner of Blair Road and the road going to K-25?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, before you got to K-25, it used to be – the railroad track used to go by there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you had lunch in the school?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah, Ford, Bacon, and Davis operated a lunch facility there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the school in operation at that time?
MR. BARNETT: No, it was not, but the building was still there and in good shape.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, Happy Valley, was that a trailer camp or do you recall?
MR. BARNETT: It – pretty much so but it was fully furnished.
MR. HUNNICUTT: For construction workers for K-25?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What other places of business did they have in Happy Valley?
MR. BARNETT: Well, they had a grocery store. They had a barber shop and – wasn’t a whole lot there but that’s about – I don’t – I hadn’t thought about that in so long, I'm not real sure. I don’t want to mislead you. But I did use to get haircut there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Moving back into Oak Ridge, your children, you had?
MR. BARNETT: Two boys.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Two boys. What were their names?
MR. BARNETT: Larry and Lee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, is Lee the oldest?
MR. BARNETT: The oldest.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When they attended Oak Ridge schools, do you recall which schools they attended?
MR. BARNETT: Cedar Hill.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Both of them?
[Conversation interrupted 43:33]
MR. BARNETT: Cedar Hill and the high school. Did you go to Cedar Hill? [asks son off camera]
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about their junior high, did they attend Jefferson Junior High at that time?
[Conversation interrupted 43:47]
MR. BARNETT: Did you go to Jefferson?
SON: Jefferson.
MR. BARNETT: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did they get to school?
MR. BARNETT: They rode a school bus. You rode a school bus to school, didn’t you?
SON: Walked or bicycle.
MR. BARNETT: What?
SON: Walked or took the bicycle.
MR. BARNETT: At Cedar Hill, you walked?
SON: Or rode the bicycle.
MR. BARNETT: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, when they were going to school, do you recall what kind of dress clothes they wore?
MR. BARNETT: What did you wear to school?
SON: Can't remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s okay.
SON: I'm not here, remember?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Probably typical jeans or –
MR. BARNETT: Whatever the style at that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. BARNETT: I know on Friday night, they’d always go to the – what was the place y’all go to on Friday night?
SON: Wildcat Den.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Wildcat Den.
MR. BARNETT: The Wildcat Den.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At this time, when you went to work, and the plant got up and running more, tell me some more about what your job duties was at that time.
MR. BARNETT: Well, in the ‘40s, late ‘40s, I was in charge of the planning department of maintenance and engineering. There’s always a lot of construction going on at K-25 at that time. By our planning department, we had to submit any project over a certain amount of money, in a formal request to the AEC with drawings and justification all that stuff. I had the estimating department, the materials department, the job engineers that oversaw the projects, plus preparing the proposal justifying the projct. That was in the ‘40s and then when the Cold War continued to heat up, they decided to build a K-29 plant. So, I got involved in a big way on that because they asked me, my department to make an estimate what the plant was going to cost and I told Bill Humes, who I worked for, he was my boss, I said, “How in the world am I going to estimate what a converter is going to cost?” He says, “Grab a bunch of drawings that you people have just made, get on the road and go to some manufacturer’s and ask what it cost to build so many of those.” So, okay, I went up in the Midwest, talked to people. I went up to a place like Newport News ship building and dry dock, which made a lot of our equipment. And I’d stretch these secret drawings out on the table and I said, “Now look, I can't give you a copy of that. It’s a secret but you can take all the notes you want to. I want to know how much this would cost.” And that came back to bite me when I took polygraph examinations, I was asked did I disclose classified information to unauthorized people. I said no. I was following instructions but I was letting unclassified people see secret drawings. I got the estimates and we – I remember that Dick Cook, Colonel Cook and Clark Center came to my office and we went over the cost estimate to build K-29 and they accepted our estimate and that’s what they asked Congress, money to build a K-29 plant so that was part of my responsibilities back then. I had trouble with polygraph tests after that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned polygraph test or lie detector test; I think they call it in those days. How often did you have to take that?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t remember. I took several of them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what was the result after you took this one and divulged – you let secret drawings be seen by non-cleared people?
[Conversations interrupted 49:11]
MR. BARNETT: Well, they asked me “Have you released classified information?” I sweated and sweated and “Now, how am I going to answer that?” and I finally convinced myself that I would be morally right to say “no” because I had been instructed to get this information that we could pass on to the government and I said, “No.” Now, years later and I’d say in the – probably the 1980s or 1970s, I asked a good friend of mine, George Dykes. I said, “George, did I ever fail a polygraph test?” He says, “No, if you had failed it, I would have known about it.” So, my conscience was clear. I did what I was instructed to do. I got the information I needed and everybody’s happy.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In 1945, when they dropped the bomb on Japan, where were you and what was your thoughts?
MR. BARNETT: What was my thought? I lost a dollar.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was because you guys had a bet on when the date they would drop the first bomb?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were you when you heard the news?
MR. BARNETT: I was in my office at K-25 and it seems to me that the plant had been notified and had been – it’s a little hazy. I phoned Shirley, my wife, and said “Turn on the radio at such a such a time. There’s going to be an announcement made.” My biggest surprise was it’s all – all over the United States, I saw what everybody was talking about. We went into the war and all that. I've been in secret for so long that it was sort of a surprise.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned meeting and working with General Groves. What type of person was he?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t know. I can't answer that question because the only time I saw him was when he was at the administration building at Clark Center’s office or someplace like that and my office, at that time, was in the same building. I just casually see him, not talk to him. I didn’t have an opportunity to actually be around while he was talking. I’d just see him.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about Colonel Nichols?
MR. BARNETT: Nichols? He – I never saw him at the plant. He most stayed in the Castle as far as I know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did any of the scientists ever visit the K-25 plant that you know of?
MR. BARNETT: Oh, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who were they?
MR. BARNETT: The fellow who, at Columbia University who was in charge of the research on the gas and diffusion plant. Now, let’s see what was his name? I was in a meeting with him one time. No, I was in Clark Center’s office and he came by and spoke to us. He was the one who – he was head of the engineering department at Columbia University at the time. I forgot his name.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they seem to be very knowledgeable with what they were talking about?
MR. BARNETT: Well, I really didn’t – he was knowledgeable. Look at the results but as far as the making of the bomb, that was out in Los Alamos and all we were doing was the gaseous diffusion. That’s about as far as I was involved.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about security in Oak Ridge in those days, in the city itself?
[Conversation overlapping 54:24]
MR. BARNETT: Well, I think it was acceptable. I think it was good. We just – we didn’t talk.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall seeing billboards around the city that said to keep your mouth shut or something that may –
[Conversation interrupted 54:49]
MR. BARNETT: I tell you, it seemed to me there was stuff like that. I know that they patrolled the fences on horseback and the word got out, I don’t know how true this was. One of the guards on horseback saw a rabbit. He’s going to kill himself a rabbit. The rabbit ran in front of it. When his pistol got aimed of the horse’s head, he pulled the trigger. The rabbit got away but the horse didn’t. I don’t know whether you ever heard of the story or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, I've heard that before. Did you have anybody, relatives or anybody, friends, that came to visit you during the times when the city was gated?
MR. BARNETT: Well, my mother and my – it seem to me – I don’t think so, just my mother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what you had to go through to get a pass for her to get in?
MR. BARNETT: Yes, it’s the same as I did because she was going to stay an extended period of time. She had a regular badge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember where you had to go to get the pass?
MR. BARNETT: I think at Elza Gate, if I remember correctly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about milk delivery in town? Do you recall how milk was delivered in Oak Ridge?
MR. BARNETT: You didn’t get any milk during the war. When Lee and Larry were born, we had to use red stamps to buy canned milk to feed them. We’d feed them on canned milk. It took red stamps out of our ration book.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me again about some of the high security situations in Oak Ridge. You mentioned something about liquor. What is that all about?
MR. BARNETT: What we thought and I still believe to be accurate that the officer’s club always ran short of whiskey so during that period, if you go through the gate, they’re going to search your car for whiskey and they confiscated your whiskey and I always said it went directly to the officer’s club. Now, I was never in the officer’s club but they seemed to be looking for whiskey and nothing else. Well, they said firearms and things in that nature which I'm sure they did and we were always trying to think of ways to get it in. ’How we can beat them?’ If you get caught, all they’re just going to take your whiskey. Plus the people making these decisions, they’re the ones drinking it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what were some of the ways you got the whiskey in?
[Conversation interrupted 58:23]
MR. BARNETT: Well, when I came down here, a good buddy, you’ve probably heard of Bob Wickle, he’s still alive. Bob and myself were in New York together and he asked me to bring a case of whiskey down to him. Well, I brought myself a case of whiskey and I stopped over here in Clinton, gave him a ring when we drove down to Oak Ridge. I said, “Bob, I'm in Clinton such and such place. How are we going to get those two cases of whiskey in?” He says, “I’ll meet you at a such and such place.” He came in a government car and we packed two cases of whiskey around the engine. Being a government car, they never looked at the engine. They would look under the hood and look in the trunk and they look in the back seat. They’d look under the fenders, every place. So, I followed Bob into the plant and he is in the government car and although they checked the government car, they didn’t look under the hood. He went a couple of blocks on a side street and I got my case of whiskey out of the government car, put it back in mine. So that was – then, I had a friend of mine who was coming in and she had a child with her and she had some whiskey in the back seat and when they started looking, she pinched the child real hard, child starts screaming and hollering and she says, “God, hurry up. I’ve got to get this child home.” They let her go on through. Now, it was – oh now, what some of the AEC people did or maybe the Army, I forgot. They had briefcases that they could fit four fifths in it and they’d tag it secret. Were you aware of that?
MR. HUNNICUTT: No.
MR. BARNETT: Well, these are things that went on. Now, I never knew of anyone who did anything illegal. I don’t call it illegal bringing whiskey in because I knew where it was going to go if we got caught. I never knew anyone who brought anything in or did anything that was violating security. We were all – after all, this was during the war. We were concerned about our safety as much as anybody else so – but we were full of piss and vinegar.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When they opened the gates in March of 1949, do you remember that event?
MR. BARNETT: I was out of town. I wasn’t in town. It wasn’t –I remember the event and the Hollywood stars being here but I was up East somewhere, at the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your wife attend any of the events?
MR. BARNETT: No, that was –
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of the special places in Oak Ridge that you and your wife went to visit or enjoy recreation or things of that nature?
MR. BARNETT: You mean while we were living there?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. BARNETT: Well, we had friends and we had dinner parties. We belonged to the dance club. In fact, I was president of the dance club one year. We had – we used to go to a lot of movies back then but I had been to half a dozen movies in the past 50 years I guess. Back then, we’d go to movies and Shirley would go to Knoxville, shop. We had lots of friends that –we all had dinner parties, things of that nature. It’s a good social group.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about dancing on the tennis courts? Did you ever attend any of those?
MR. BARNETT: Dance on the tennis courts?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tennis courts, yes, in the early days?
MR. BARNETT: No, I never danced on the tennis courts.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about a place called the Snow White Drive-in? Do you remember that?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about the Snow White Drive-in.
MR. BARNETT: You have to ask my son.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it a restaurant?
MR. BARNETT: I have heard of it but I don’t recall.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You don’t remember it?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the Skyway Drive-In Theater?
MR. BARNETT: Oh yeah. Let’s see, the fellow who owned that was a good friend of ours. I think I even forgot his name. We went to football games. We’d always go to UT football games. We’d go to drive-in theaters, but you have to realize we were busy raising a family. That was the most important part of our life at that time. Now, when we bought that cemesto, we started improving it like putting doors on the closets, like changing the heating to natural gas, like I built a concrete patio in the back and had a telephone out on the patio, had indirect lighting and we used to throw parties out there on our patio. And I had fence all around it and we had a swimming pool on the back for the boys. Colonel Nichol’s brother-in-law who was also a colonel had lived in our D house before we did and he had the contract to build a little swimming pool in his home as well as a nice barbeque pit. So, when we got the house, we had a swimming pool for the boys. Now, I don’t know who paid for it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: We’ll probably never know that, will we? How about Oak Ridge Hospital? Did you ever have a need to use the hospital?
MR. BARNETT: Well, when the boys were born and when I had an ulcer.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about your stay in Oak Ridge Hospital when you had your ulcer. Did they take good care of you?
MR. BARNETT: Well see, the doctors were personal friends of mine. We knew most of the doctors in town. In fact, Dr. Regan lived right across the street from us. We used to go to football games together. We had quality doctors. We had quality nurses and I think that the Oak Ridge Hospital and medical service did a good job back then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the dental service you had in town?
MR. BARNETT: The what?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Dental service for your teeth? Did you ever use that?
MR. BARNETT: Of course, I had my teeth filled. Just like any other ordinary town, I think it was all right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there anything else that we hadn’t talked about that you’d like to talk about Oak Ridge?
MR. BARNETT: Yeah. I don’t think – I just don’t believe that all the problems we had with our steam generation plant is probably known. Now, the first thing, the power lines from steam plant to K-25, they had lead covered – lead sheath cables to transmit the power in a trench and I remember that it was moist in the trench. I never knew really why they did that but I think they was trying to sabotage or something. Anyway, electrolysis was happening on the lead sheath and that was discovered and we had to put [inaudible 01:09:03] protection on all the cables of K-25 to the power house because if that lead sheath did electrolytic action and then deteriorates, you’d have a hell on explosion of that went to ground and that would shut the plant down. At that time, our plant was not connected with TVA and the only source of power was our own. That was – I don’t know whether that information has been recorded or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I noticed the pictures of the S-50 building, it was painted black. Do you know any reason why that building was black or the top roof of the building was black?
MR. BARNETT: I don’t know. Now that you mentioned it, I remember it was black. But I never asked a question. I don’t know. One time, TVA opened up some gates at the bottom of the dam to get all the trash out of the bottom of Norris Dam into the mainstream to get rid of it, clean up the bottom of the lake. Well, when that trash hit – this was on the Poplar creek. No, it was on the Clinch. It went into the intake system for the condensers for all of our turbines in the steam plant and when that trash hit the screen – it’s normally supposed to clear up the trash, there was so much of it, it jammed the screen, broke the cast iron sprocket which was four feet in diameter that drove the screen. The trash came in and blocked the screen to where the water wouldn’t go through. There was no condensed water for all the turbines driving the plant generators to supply K-25. K-25 shut down. Now, it wasn’t – you just don’t press a button and start everything up again. Here we had a four feet diameter sprocket to drive the chain and we phoned the company and said “Can you get us a sprocket?” I didn’t. They said, “Well, we’ll put it on the production list. It’ll be several weeks, probably a week or so, several weeks before we can get it.” I had my designer to go down and make a drawing of that sprocket with all the teeth in it and we had the machine shop make a sprocket out of one inch steel plate. The hub of an old sprocket was still usable. We put some dowel pins between the steel plates and hub and got that back in service in a couple of days after cleaning the thing out. So, we got the steam plant back and up. I mean the generator plant back in operation. But you don’t shut a cell down without going through a procedure or you’re going to damage some equipment. Well, that’s had happened. A lot of equipment in the cascade was damaged and it took weeks to get that plant back on the line. The TVA shut us down once but the AEC had a levee built down in the Clinch River and put a lot of screens out there so when the water got ready to come into a cooling system, it had already have been through screens. I don’t know whether all that’s been recorded or not but that’s the time that TVA shut us down. Now, at that time, we couldn’t use TVA power. We wasn’t connected with TVA which later we were. Another time we screwed up, I didn’t screw up but power house operators did. They tried to put a 25 megawatt turbine on the line, 180 degrees out of phase. You know, it’s the sine curve of sixty cycle. Well, they tried to put it on phase that it pulled all of the windings out of the generator. It just sheared the keyways right out of the shaft coupling and it really gave TVA a bump. The TVA operation dispatched an office in Chattanooga, as I understand, phoned up and he says, “What the hell are y’all doing?” Well, if you saw the inside of that turbine, you saw what a mess we had.
That’s another problem we had and then, in the late ‘50s, I was in charge of maintenance at that time, mechanical maintenance which included [inaudible 01:15:50] powerhouse, K-25, all the auxiliaries. I was in charge of operating the railroad, the salvage yard with all the radioactive material. I got a call from my supervisor that the powerhouse’s, their 10 inch 160 schedule pipe just broke loose from a turbine and we shut the powerhouse down. Well, I jumped in my car and went down there. I got in the turbine room. It looked like it had been snowing. The insulation for all that piping system had just – that pipe just waving around like that with all that energy back of it and that asbestos insulation, which is sifting through the air. This break was caused by graphitization in the heat affected zone of the world. The piping system could not take the 900 degree temperature of the steam and graphite formed on the heat affected zone on the welds. Now, we had – with the ultrasound methods before that, we had detected that it had quite a few wells and had replaced them with stainless steel rod. This one, we didn’t detect and that 10 inch – can you imagine that 10 inch line busting loose providing steam to that turbine and the pipe flopping around in the air with 1300 pounds pressure, 900 degree temperature of super heat and insulation going everywhere? As a result of that, they shut – well, that time, in the late 50s, we were tied in to TVA and they replaced all of the high pressure piping system. This took months to do that so the steam generation plant has a history of itself of problems. I don’t know if all this has been properly recorded or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you retire?
MR. BARNETT: Well, I was transferred to Y-12 in 1960. I stayed at Y-12 in charge of mechanical – no, maintenance over there; just the field maintenance, I didn’t have the shops. Then in 1966, when I left Y-12, Carbide transferred me to one of their own plants in Kokomo, Indiana where I was in charge of engineering and maintenance of one of their plants in Kokomo, Indiana. Then, that was in 1966. In 1970, Carbide sold that plant to Cabot Corporation. Politics got involved and I resigned and went to Canada. I accepted a job in Quebec at a stainless steel plant where I was in charge of engineering and maintenance there. We were made all grades of stainless. We had a 65 ton arc melt furnace and we did our own rolling and heat treating and rolling of stainless steel to make all grades, weld all popular grades.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you finally retired from Oak Ridge and went to these other jobs. Did you ever come back to Oak Ridge later?
MR. BARNETT: Oh sure. Larry lived and then graduated from college while he set up a business here in Oak Ridge. He was president of East Tennessee Engineering Company.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you live in Maryville today?
MR. BARNETT: Who?
MR. HUNNICUTT: You.
MR. BARNETT: Yes, I live in a retirement. I have a cottage over there. They also have facilities for assisted living. They also have a health clinic for people, who need to stay in, plus they hold beds and I lost my wife two years ago.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, it’s been a pleasure to interview you and your information about K-25 has been very helpful. I'm sure that anyone in the future that would like to know more information about K-25 that you don’t read in a book, will certainly get it from your interview today and I thank you very much for your time.
MR. BARNETT: Well, there’s one thing I didn’t tell you, which I think is – as soon as the war was over, John L. Lewis threatened to take his coal miners out on strike. As a result of that, the government built a 23 inch natural gas pipeline from Nashville to our steam generation plant at K-25. That’s how we got natural gas in Oak Ridge because of John L. Lewis.
[End of Interview]
[Editor’s Note: Portions of this transcript have been edited at the request of Mr. Barnett. The corresponding audio and video components remain unchanged.]